From Her Perspective

When I graduated from college, my two best friends moved out to Los Angeles to seek fame and fortune (which they have, jerks). I went with them on the trip cross-country, and it was an experience that will stay with me for the rest of my life (who knew there were so many all-you-can-eat Kentucky Fried Chickens in the Deep South? And Graceland? Hello!). Anyway, that was many years ago, and since then, we've been traveling back and forth across the country to visit one another. Last weekend, I had had enough of all things Boston and went to LA.

The first thing that we did, and always do, when I arrive is go to Jack in the Box. There just aren't enough fast food chains on the East Coast who serve a side of Ebola virus with every order, so when I'm there, I have to get my fill. My friends were completely grossed out as I ordered many things off the menu (all of which had mayonnaise. At Jack in the Box, even breakfast sandwiches have mayonnaise. That's actually too gross even for me.) and devoured them as if I had never seen a chili cheese curly fry. The parking lot was full of high school kids and, curiously, lots of girls who looked like porn stars. I was thinking they were prostitutes, as this particular neighborhood of Hollywood is crawling with them, but it was only two in the afternoon. My friends informed me that they were "actresses." Okay, whatever.

After that, the only logical thing to do was go to Happy Hour. Since we don't have Happy Hour here that counts (no, food does NOT count), I was very excited to partake in all of the specials. We went to a bar called Happy Endings, which, to my surprise, wasn't a massage parlor, but did serve nine varieties of fishbowls. In actual fishbowls, which I have not seen since college. If anyone knows of a place that actually serves a fishbowl, I would love to know. Additionally, there is a claw machine; the ones you see at arcades or carnivals, but instead of winning a stuffed Bart Simpson doll, you go digging for live lobsters. Yes, live lobsters in a tiny little tank in LA that you can win and eat for a dollar. Needless to say, I did not partake in this game.

I did, however, take part in many rousing rounds of drunk driver, after which we decided that the only thing left to do was play flip cup. Apparently, in crappy dive bars in Los Angeles, you can do whatever you want. This is the point of the trip where I realized how different Boston truly is from LA. For example, I outweighed all of the girls there by at least 50 pounds. Maybe 100. Also, people out there are so concerned about being cool that they clearly haven't spent any time honing their flip cup skills. Maybe they're too busy getting their teeth whitened? Needless to say, I was kicking the collective asses of my friends and their friends who came and met us. If the slaughter rule applied to the International Regulations of Flip Cup, we'd have stopped after 20 minutes. But the massacre had begun to attract the attention of all of the wannabe actors and musicians, and pretty soon there was a line forming for a chance to play with us. I have never been more embarrassed. People actually wanted to take their picture with me, I was so good. I guess in LA, any sort of fame is celebrated.

The next day, I finally got the chance to do something that I have wanted to do since my friends moved out to Los Angeles. We went to the Ripley's Believe It Or Not museum. And let me tell you, I couldn't believe it. Basically, yes, it is a glorified basement from 1975, full of crap you could find in your grandparents' house. There were more exhibits featuring items created out of human hair than I was comfortable with, but all in all, it was pretty much the greatest experience of my life. I mean, have you really lived until you've seen the skeleton of a two headed goat? What about a merman? Yeah, I don't want to brag, but I've seen both.

When we left the museum, we walked around, making fun of the tourists (completely ignoring the fact, of course, that we were still in our pajamas) and looking at crap in the souvenir stores. Now, this was the weekend right before Boston beat LA so I was assuming that everything would be covered in gold and purple and people would be freaking out, wearing foam fingers, all the good stuff. But nobody even cared. Of course most of the people who live in LA aren't actually from LA, but it still made me a little sad. Even though I am not a sports fan, it's nice when people get excited and kind of band together for a common cause. But the people out there don't really have that. It was strange, but all of a sudden I wanted to get back to Boston. I loved spending time with my friends, of course, but there's no way I could ever live anywhere else. It's just too awesome here. Well, with one glaring exception, of course. You can't get a mayo, egg and cheese sandwich with a side of dysentery practically anywhere. But you can't have everything.